What can United fans expect from Ralf Rangnick?

The owners of Manchester United believed that the former striker of the team from Old Trafford, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, would be the man who would bring about a revival.

Unfortunately, that did not happen in the end. Just like in gambling at Thunderbolt Casino bonuses you don't win all the time. Manchester United cannot be a club that will be satisfied with the placement in the Champions League, but it should fight for trophies on all fronts. For years, Manchester does not look like that club from the Sir Alex Ferguson era.

The club spent a lot of money and there were no results at all. Solskajer was allowed to continue working as a manager at United, although he did not bring any trophy to the club, and he certainly had to do so at least in the Europa League final, where they were big favorites with due respect to Villareal.

Manchester has provided desperate games this season in the Premier League and the club had to react so Solskjær was fired anyway.

Who took Solskiaer’s place?

The baton was taken over for a short period by Michael Carrick, who managed to secure a place in the next phase of the Champions League, as well as to play a draw with the leader of the championship, Chelsea, last weekend. Carrick was known to be only a temporary solution and waiting for some great coaching name to sit on the United bench.

There were several candidates in circulation and the club eventually opted for Ralf Rangnick. Rangnick became known to the public as the coach of Hoffenheim and then Red Bull Leipzig. This season, he performed the function of director in Lokomotiv Moscow.

This time, Manchester United decided on a systemic solution and not on a man who should represent the savior, the messiah. That seems to have been the biggest problem of the most trophy-winning English team for years.

There was no systemic work, the kind that was present at the club when Sir Alex Ferguson sat on the bench. Rangnick may not have been a big player name like his predecessor on the United bench, nor does he have the charisma and trophies like Jose Mourinho or Van Gaal, but he gained a reputation in Germany for his meticulous work and for leaving nothing to chance.

Football has become an industry, a business and there is not much room for emotions in it. It is in this spirit that Rangnick works.

He is cold and calculated, and this winter he expelled the then coach from Lokomotiv because he had a different vision, and such a decision was greeted with great disappointment by the fans of the mentioned club. He was brought to that club to make progress, but Lokomotiv took a few steps back.

Information has surfaced in the public that Rangnick has not come to the club too many times even though he has made important decisions. He worked as a professional consultant on German television. His term at United is limited to the end of the season, and Rangnick will take on the role of advisor for the next two years.

The goal of the owners of United is for him to be the man who will put the club on its feet. He will be in charge of reinforcements and is expected to bring the necessary quality to a team that has wandered too much in previous seasons.

Of course, we must not forget that United has several superstars in its lineup, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Pogba, Bruno Fernandes, and the results have to be better. No one can say for sure what the fans could expect from Rangnick. He built the foundations of Hoffenheim and Leipzig, but this is still the biggest challenge he faces in his career. Rangnick should be everything that United was not in previous seasons.

United stars will have to listen in the locker room, which propagates a football philosophy in which there is no place for individuals. We mentioned above some of the stars that United has in their lineup. In all of them, the ego is expressed to the maximum. Rangnick can't stand it.

He doesn't suffer when the whole team has to work for one or two players. However, he did not have the opportunity to face such a situation in the clubs where he worked. He never had a chance to work with aces like Ronaldo.

Can Ronaldo handle it?

Many fans criticize Ronaldo for not being able to make an adequate contribution on defense at the age of 36. Rangnick is someone who requires pressing all over the field. Regarding that, he once said: "You have to be aware of what kind of football you want to play. A little pressure? What does a little pressing mean? A little pressing is like saying you're a little pregnant. You are either pregnant or you are not. You either play pressing or you don't play. "

Such an attitude about pressing was adopted by Rangnick back in 1983 when he was a player-coach in the six-league Victoria Backnang. He played a friendly match with Dynamo Kyiv and could not find a solution for pressing the Ukrainians.

He admitted that he was convinced all the time that Dinamo has three more players. With such a view of football, he raised Hoffenheim from the third league to the top seven in Germany. Leipzig led him to the semifinals of the Champions League, making him a regular participant in the European elite. He lit the way for many now-proven coaches from Germany. For example, Thomas Tuchel when he appointed as the coach of Stuttgart for U15.

“Thomas became a coach through me. He was a player for me in Ulm and he had to end his career due to knee problems. I gave him a job and our U15 team. He didn't even plan to be a coach, he worked at a bar in Stuttgart. But if you look at Chelsea today you will see that we have a common plan of what to do when your team has the ball or when the opponent has the ball. Thomas is tactically on a very sophisticated level."

Who else can we compare Rangnick's football with? "Our idea is clear and it is very, very similar to my friend Jürgen Klopp. Our football is heavy metal, rock, and roll, not slow balls. Our football is not a round pass, it is not a back pass. Possession of the ball doesn't make sense to us. " Julian Nagelsmann (who gave him a job at the Hoffenheim youth school), Jurgen Klopp, and Ralph Hasenhuttl, now coaches of Bayern, Liverpool, and Southampton, also admitted that he had an impact on their careers. When we add Tuhel to them, it is clear how much Rangnick is respected in Germany.

"Unfortunately, he is coming to Manchester United, but that's the way it is. Ralf is a very experienced coach, he made two clubs, two forces, out of nothing. He did various jobs, but he always primarily thought about coaching. United will be organized on the field and we have to understand that. But all coaches need time, and Ralf will soon realize that he will not have time to train ", warns Klopp.

Rangnick emphasizes that three things are important to him: capital, concept, competence. "Success based on capital is limited. It is far from enough in itself. You need concept and competence. If you use them well, you will generate capital."

So that's the plan. To return the concept and competence to the business of United. However, the fans first want football to return to the United game. The only question is whether Rangnick's football will be to the liking of Ronaldo, Pogba, Bruno. And not just them. Last year, speaking about Luke Shaw, he said…

"A left-back would come in handy. I know that they have Luke Shaw, but I'm not sure that he is at the level needed by a club like Manchester United." Don't expect the same from Ralf Rangnick. There is no emotion here. Just a job.